PROPAGANDA: Heavy Blows

• Share

PROPAGANDA Heavy Blows

World War II entered its fourth week and still the fiercest offensives between the Allies and Germany were on psychological rather than physical fronts. Propaganda ministries in London, Paris and Berlin worked overtime to deliver smashing blows at their enemy's popular morale.

Blow of the week was struck by the British, who put out a story which, if widely circulated in Germany, might do more than 100 Allied divisions to put skids under A. Hitler & Co.

"Representatives of one of the oldest and most famous institutions of its kind in the world" (obviously the Bank of England) revealed to news correspondents, as the results of a two-year search, that all the top men in A. Hitler & Co., with the sole exception of A. Hitler, long ago took care to deposit fortunes and take out big insurance policies outside of Germany. Hermann GÖring, Rudolf Hess, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Robert Ley, Heinrich Himmler and Julius Streicher were all specifically named.* The total of their holdings was categorically fixed at $34,873,500. Banks of the U. S., South America, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Egypt, Estonia, Latvia and Finland were named as depositories.

Göring was credited with $3,025,000 insurance on his life, $907,500 on his wife's life, $3,575,000 in cash. Goebbels was given a total of $8,990,000, of which $4,635,000 was said to be cash. Ribbentrop's figure was $9,740,000. The report named securities held for GÖring by "a German shipping firm in New York": $750,000 worth of bonds, mostly Pennsylvania R. R., Illinois Central, Cities Service, Bethlehem Steel. It gave him three ranches in South America; $1,225,000 in a bank at Sao Paulo, Brazil; $1,000,000 in Swedish kronor, Danish kroner, Dutch guilders and Belgian francs in Banco di Sicilia's branch at Trieste and A. B. Svenska Handelsbanken's branch at Malmö, Sweden. He was said to have safe deposits in Zürich, Chicago ($450,000) and at Sumitomo Bank, Ltd. in San Francisco ($600,000).

If true, the report constituted an amazing piece of research. Whether true or not, it constituted a terrific piece of propaganda, not only as showing the Nazi chiefs prepared to run, but because hoarding money outside Germany is a crime in Germany, punishable by death. Sure to be whispered inside Germany, its effects may easily be serious.